Unpacking the “Culture of Protection”: A Political Economy Analysis of UN Protection of Civilians

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Unpacking the “culture of protection”

A political economy analysis of OCHA and the protection of civilians

Andreas Øien Stensland and Ole Jacob Sending

Norwegian Institute of International AffairsDepartment of Security and Conflict Management

Security in Practice 2 · 2011

[NUPI Report]

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Andreas Øien Stensland and Ole Jacob Sending

Unpacking the “culture of protection”

A political economy analysis of OCHA

and the protection of civilians

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Thanks are due to the Training for Peace programme at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs for financial support. A great many people – in Juba, South Sudan, and in New York – have taken time off their busy schedules to talk to us. Without them, we would not have been able to finalize this report. Since interviews have been based on anonymity, our respondents are not identified here by name. Øystein Lyngroth at the MFA in Oslo and Thoralf Stenvold at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN in New York allowed us to sit in on their meetings, and helped us get in touch with key staff in different UN agencies. Similarly, Elisabeth Lothe and Randolf Strømsnes took time off their busy schedules to help us get in touch with UNMIS staff in Juba. Thanks also to Stian Kjeksrud and Jacob Ravndal for sharing their expertise, and their experiences from field trips. And to Susan Høivik for greatly improving the language. Finally, thanks for support from and stimulating discussions with colleagues at NUPI: Ingrid Ma- rie Bredlid, Benjamin de Carvalho, Cedric de Coning, Jan Egeland, Jon Harald Sande Lie, Mikkel F. Pedersen and Niels Nagelhus Schia.

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List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

C-34 The Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations CAP Consolidated Appeals Process

CERF Central Emergency Response Fund

CO Country Office

CRD Coordination and Response Division

DDR Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration DHA Department of Humanitarian Affairs

DPA Department of Political Affairs

DPKO Department for Peacekeeping Operations DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

ECHA Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs ECOSOC Economic and Social Council

ERC Emergency Relief Coordinator

GA General Assembly

IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross IHL International Humanitarian Law

MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MONUC United Nations Organization Mission in the Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo

MSF Médecins Sans Frontières

NUPI Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

OCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ODSG OCHA Donor Support Group

OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights PDSB Policy Development and Studies Branch

PoC Protection of Civilians

RO Regional Office

UNAMSIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

UNMIS United Nations Mission in Sudan UNSC United Nations Security Council USG Under Secretary-General

WFP United Nations World Food Programme

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The standard story of the genesis of the concept of the protection of civilians (PoC) goes something like this: In the late 1990s, UN member states and the UN Security Council recognized that the protection of civilians in conflicts is central to international peace and security.

This new view of the scope for the Council’s agenda, and the task of UN peace operations, reflected painful lessons from Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, where the international community had failed to halt systematic attacks on civilians, including genocide. In 1999, the UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone was the first UN peace operation to have a mandate to protect civilians, explicitly stating that it should ‘afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence’. Since then, more than ten UN peace operations have been mandated to protect civilians – most notably MONUC, which has the protection of civilians as its primary objective.

Against this standard background story, most studies of protection move on to discuss the challenge of rendering PoC operational, the differing perspectives of humanitarian and military actors in this regard, and the lack of adequate training and resources of military actors to perform protection tasks. A central finding from these studies is that the meaning of PoC is unclear, and that different actors have diverging views about what it is and what should be prioritized.¹ True, there are many historically oriented studies of humanitarianism and also of

‘protection’ as a foundational theme for humanitarian action. But the bulk of the literature on protection of civilians, particularly as it per- tains to peace operations, have largely overlooked the specifics of its genesis in favour of a focus on more contemporary organizational and operational issues. A case in point is the OCHA-DPKO commissioned study on the protection of civilians that was published in late 2009, the contents of which served as the basis for the ensuing work by DPKO and OCHA in developing new best practices and operational guidelines for PoC work. A central finding of the OCHA-DPKO study – echoed in other studies – is that there is a persistent uncertainty and vagueness among practitioners about what PoC means, and that different actors – military, political, humanitarian and developmental – privilege different aspects of PoC. This vagueness and uncertainty of

1 See for example, Victoria Holt, Glyn Taylor and Max Kelly, Protecting civilians in the context of UN peacekeeping operations - successes,sSetbacks and remaining challenges, Independent study jointly commissioned by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (New York: United Nations, 2009).See also Justin McDermott and Måns Hanssen, Protection of civilians: Delivering on the mandate through civil–military coordination (Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), 2010).

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Andreas Øien Stensland and Ole Jacob Sending 8

what PoC means, it is said, represents a central obstacle to rendering PoC operationally effective as an integral part of peace operations.

While we agree that the vagueness of PoC inhibits operational effectiveness, our focus here is on why the term has been defined in the way that it has. In short, we want to move from a description to explanation: Why is PoC defined in such broad and comprehensive terms?

Why do different actors advance partly differing views on what PoC should be? We focus on the interests of key actors involved in formulating and advancing different aspects of the PoC, and how an actor’s political and institutional environment shapes those interests.² Bodies like OCHA, DPKO, UNHCR and others are certainly bureaucratic organizations, but they must nonetheless compete for influence and resources, and as such they must be understood as political actors in their own right. Thus, rather than using the conceptual vagueness as an implicit explanation for the lack of operational effectiveness, we focus on the interests of the actors involved in formulating and advancing it. We offer an account of how OCHA has used and defined PoC in ways that reflect its efforts to secure political influence in relation to other UN agencies and UN member states. This is not to sug- gest that OCHA has an instrumental relation to the plight of civilians in conflict areas. Far from it. We want to highlight a central feature of how all UN actors seek to do good while also advancing organization- specific interests.³ Certainly, the ERC – as head of OCHA – has a mandate to advance humanitarian principles, key among which is the protection of civilians. But how to define and operationalize protection, and how to advance it in relation to other actors, such as the UNSC, cannot be read from the ERC mandate.

As a heuristic, we can identify three ideal-typical interpretations of

‘protection of civilians’. We then seek to explain how and why OCHA has privileged one of them (and by implication why other actors, such as OHCHR and UNHCR, have privileged others). The three interpretations of PoC are as follows:

i) Protection of Civilians in armed conflict – the IHL approach

The protection of civilians in armed conflict is grounded in Interna- tional Humanitarian Law. It is described in the 4^th Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and later

2 Of course, this is not unique to PoC: all policy concepts have an element of ambiguity and vagueness, and part of our motivation for advancing this mode of analysis is precisely that the dynamics described here can be found across a variety of issue-areas. But how and why different actors advance different interpretations of a concept necessitates detailed empirical analysis of their resources, key constituencies, and the competition faced in their policy environment.

3 For a highly instructive analysis using such an analytical framework, see Ben Ramalingam and Michael Barnett, 'The humanitarian’s dilemma: collective action or inaction in international relief (London: ODI Background Paper, 2010).

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supplemented by the Additional Protocols of 1977. These treaties are designed to protect persons who do not participate in hostilities, or are no longer participating. To this end, it elaborates on the protected status of civilians, victims and non-combatants in armed conflict through detailed provisions as to their treatment, status and rights.⁴ In situations not covered by these treaties, internal disturbances in particular, civilians are protected by other international bodies of law (notably, human rights law and its inalienable rights),⁵ by national laws compat- ible with international laws and by the principles of humanity. Interna- tional refugee law and, more recently, international criminal law as described in the Rome Statute also form part this approach to civilian protection in armed conflict. The ICRC, as the guardian of international humanitarian law, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights subscribe to this approach.

ii) Protection – the Humanitarian approach

A second approach to civilian protection is the concept of Humanitari- an Protection that has developed in parallel with the IHL approach.

Along with the rest of the international community, humanitarians were hit hard by their failure to stop the genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the last decades of the twenti- eth century. There was an increasing awareness that humanitarian assistance had become a complex endeavour with the potential for doing both good and, in some cases, considerable harm. Providing food and material aid when deliberate attacks upon civilians was the central issue was not only an ineffective response, but also a ‘smokescreen for political inaction’.¹ Many humanitarians believed that more could be done in the field to mitigate violations in the absence of political will to stop violence against civilians.⁶ In late 1996, the ICRC invited a group of agencies to a series of workshops on protection with the idea to develop professional standards for protection. The intention was to foster a better understanding of the various roles and practices of these actors in protection.⁷ The result of these workshops was a definition of protection formulated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) – comprising all main humanitarian actors within and outside the UN – as follows: ‘all activities aimed at ensuring full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with the letter and spirit of the relevant bodies of law (i.e. human rights law, international human-

4 DPKO/DFS, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines (2008), 5 Rights that are considered as universal standards and to which no derogation is admitted, 15.

even in time of public emergency and other exceptional circumstances. Those rights comprise: the right to life; the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments or punishments,; the prohibition of slavery and forced labour; the principle of legality and non-retroactivity of punishments, ICRC, Enhancing protection for civilians in armed conflict and other situations of violence (2008), 7.

6 IASC, Growing the sheltering tree - protecting rights through humanitarian action (Geneva: UNICEF, on behalf of the IASC, 2002).

7 Christian Captier, 'What does humanitarian protection really mean?', Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, 23 (March 2003).

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Andreas Øien Stensland and Ole Jacob Sending 10

itarian law and refugee law)’.⁸ The IASC definition of protection is broad enough to include all humanitarian partners. In practice, however, the definition is so wide that it serves the purpose of bringing the humanitarian actors together, but at the expense of a definition that can be rendered operational and specific: the more specific it be- comes, the more likely it is that the consensus will fall apart.

iii) Protection of Civilians – the comprehensive approach

A third approach to civilian protection is one where PoC is seen as ‘a complex and multi-layered process involving a diversity of entities and approaches’’⁹ This understanding of PoC is comprehensive in the sense that it embraces a range of different activities and actors with diverging understandings, means and methods to implement civilian protection. In addition to the two understanding of civilian protection described above, it includes the use of coercive means to ensure civilian protection in armed conflict. It states that ‘relevant activities may include the delivery of humanitarian assistance; the monitoring and recording of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and reporting these violations to those responsible and other decision makers; institution building, governance and development programmes; and, ultimately, the deployment of peacekeeping troops.’¹⁰ This approach brings international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law together with military protection, physical security and humanitarian assistance. This mix of activities is seen as problematic by actors subscribing to the other two understandings, who argue that it threatens to dilute the legal basis of protection of civilians in IHL or that it threatens the humanitarian principles that serve as the basis of humanitarian protection.

As we shall see, OCHA has opted for different interpretations and us- es of the term ‘protection’, but it generally advances a position that approximates the comprehensive approach described above. We argue below that given its mandate, funding situation, and relationship with other humanitarian actors, OCHA places a premium on comprehen- siveness as it accords the organization a position from which to address a host of issues, to secure influence with the UN Security Coun- cil, and to conform to the demands of the broader humanitarian community. We bring this insight about the political economy of policy evolution to bear on on-going debates about how to reduce the vagueness and uncertainty about what PoC entails. Analysts have called for a specification of what PoC is, as a stepping stone to produce a consensus on which better training, coordination and also integration are to take place. Our argument implies that this assumption may not be

8 ICRC, Third Workshop on Protection, Background Paper (7 January 1999), 21.

9 UN Secretary General, Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, S/2001/331 (30 March 2001), 2.

10 Ibid.

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valid: inasmuch as central actors, like OCHA, have had an interest in defining and advancing a broad and comprehensive concept of PoC, there is little reason to expect the emergence of a more specific and operational concept of PoC to which all actors will commit. There are interests at stake for all actors involved in advancing a particular read- ing of PoC. Given the status of the ideal of protecting civilians, a range of actors – OCHA, DPKO, UNHCR, OHCHR – will want to highlight different aspects of it as a means of being heard, getting access to resources gaining influence in relation to member states. The upshot of all this is that before we can begin to contemplate how to improve the effectiveness of the UN in addressing PoC, it is necessary to understand why, and how, different actors relate to and use PoC for organization-specific purposes. In a nutshell, the reported uncertainty and vagueness of the term is caused not so much by the inherent challenges of protecting civilians, as by the doings of different actors who hold different views of, and interests in, the concept of PoC.

We begin with a fairly detailed account of the history and organizational set-up of OCHA and move on to describe its mandate. We then go through its main constituencies, since these are here assumed to be central in shaping how the interests of UN actors are formulated and advanced. We examine OCHA’s work on, and use of, the PoC concept, and detail some of the consequences for other actors – such as DPKO, UNHCR and the OHCHR.

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2. About OCHA

The Kurdish refugee crisis following the Gulf War in 1990–91 was a wake-up call for humanitarians and donors alike. It revealed the com- plexity of getting multiple UN agencies and NGOs to coordinate their activities effectively to help civilians affected by war. In December 1991, the General Assembly responded to these shortcomings by adopting resolution 46/182, designed to ‘strengthen the United Na- tions response to both complex emergencies and natural disasters while improving the overall effectiveness of humanitarian operations in the field.’ The resolution also created the high-level position of Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC)¹¹ combining the functions car- ried out by representatives of the Secretary-General for major and complex emergencies, as well as the UN’s natural disaster functions.

The Secretary-General went on to establish the Department of Hu- manitarian Affairs (DHA) and assigned the ERC the status of Under- Secretary-General (USG) for Humanitarian Affairs, with offices in New York and Geneva to provide institutional support. However, the DHA was under-staffed and under-resourced, and by most accounts made little practical difference in humanitarian crises.¹²

In January 1998 the DHA was replaced by the Office for the Coordi- nation of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as part of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s reform programme. OCHA was relieved of most of its operational tasks, with responsibility for mine action, demobilization and disaster mitigation transferred to UNDP and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. OCHA’s core functions were now to be coordination, advocacy and policy development. The rationale was – and still is – that further ‘improvement in the coordination and management of humanitarian actions can be achieved to ensure greater coherence, while enhancing accountability.’¹³

OCHA has an Executive Office in New York close to the UN’s political centre of gravity, and an Administrative Office in Geneva where the majority of humanitarian organizations have their headquarters.

Under the overall strategic direction of the head of the Executive Of-

11 This includes coordination of the protection and assistance to IDPs.

12 Sarah Longford, ‘OCHA One Year On: Is Humanitarian Coordination any Better,’

Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, no. 13 (1999). and Thomas G. Weiss, ‘Civilian- military interactions and ongoing UN reforms: DHA's past and OCHA's remaining challenges,’ International Peacekeeping 5, no. 4 (1998). Interview, former senior OCHA Official, (Oslo: January 2011).

13 United Nations Secretary General, ‘ Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform (A/51/950),’ in Secretary General's Report (1997), 186.para.

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fice, the Administrative Office is responsible for supporting field operations. The Director of the Coordination and Response Division (CRD) in New York oversees the day-to-day management of all OCHA Regional and Country Offices (ROs/COs) and is responsible for coordinating all country-level humanitarian strategies. Through the geographic desks, CRD provides technical support to Resident Coor- dinators/Humanitarian Coordinators. CRD serves as the main conduit of information and support between the field and headquarters, facili- tating effective interaction among all OCHA branches and its ROs/

COs. OCHA has a network of regional, subregional and country offices responsible for coordinating the international humanitarian effort at the country level. Through their coordination activities on the ground and interaction with governments and other partners, OCHA’s Coun- try Offices aim to support a more enabling environment for humanitarian action and a more effective humanitarian coordination system.

Broadly speaking, OCHA has two mechanisms for directly coordinating humanitarian action. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), chaired by the ERC, is where OCHA primarily carries out its coordination functions. Participants include all humanitarian partners, from UN agencies, funds and programmes, to the Red Cross Move- ment and NGOs. The IASC objectives are to develop humanitarian policies, agree on a division of responsibility for the various aspects of humanitarian assistance, identify and addresses gaps in response, and advocate for effective application of humanitarian principles. Together with Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA), the IASC forms the key strategic coordination mechanism among major humanitarian actors. The heads of all IASC member agencies – the IASC Principals – meet twice a year in conferences chaired by the ERC. Their main tasks include making strategic policy and major operational decisions and bringing issues to the attention of the Secre- tary-General and the Security Council through the ERC. The IASC working-group level makes non-strategic policy and operational decisions, and prepares options and recommendations for the meetings of IASC Principals.

The Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) is one of the main coordination tools for complex emergencies at the field level. It serves to bring together aid organisations to jointly plan, coordinate, implement and monitor their response to natural disasters and complex emergencies.

Through the CAP, organizations working in crisis regions produce appeals which they present to the international community and donors.

Humanitarian agencies are thus supposed to appeal for funds cohe- sively instead of competitively. The CAPs have been criticized for serving as ‘shopping lists’ of aid projects, rather than representing coordinated, prioritized and well-founded plans for the delivery of hu-

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Unpacking the ‘culture of protection’ 15

manitarian aid. Together with IASC members, OCHA invested much effort in 1998 in strengthening each stage in the preparations for appeals. Despite considerable improvements resulting from OCHA’s procedural improvements and training, signals of support from donors and increased buy-in and participation from UN agencies, the progress did not lead to the hoped-for increase in contributions to projects included in the appeal.¹⁴ This remains a challenge to the CAP.

Since its establishment, OCHA has been constantly evolving and ex- panding its resources and operations. The downgrade from department to office in 1998 also meant a slash in budget and staffing. From the late 1990s to 2011, however, OCHA’s budget increased from around USD 50 mill. to some USD 252 mill., while the staff more than dou- bled, from 964 to 1980. Headquarters level in New York and Geneva saw an increase in staff from 246 to 441.¹⁵ In 2005, then-ERC Jan Egeland initiated a large humanitarian reform based on consultations with the members of the IASC. The humanitarian reform programme rested on four pillars: (1) Developing the cluster approach, where humanitarian organizations are intended to cooperate and coordinate activities within themselves according to nine different issues including Health, Protection, and Water and Sanitation. (2) More predictable funding through the re-launch of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to ensure a minimum of economic resources available to the ERC in order to start up and continue urgent operations as well as to ‘top up’ the CAP when it is not sufficiently funded. (3) Improved recruitment and training of Humanitarian Coordinators in relief operations. (4) Improved partnerships with national and local NGOs to make international humanitarian cooperation less centred on the UN and the Western states.

2.1 OCHA mandate and mission OCHA’s mandate consists of three core tasks:

(a) policy development and coordination functions in support of the Secretary-General, ensuring that all humanitarian is- sues, including those which fall between gaps in existing mandates of agencies such as protection and assistance for internally displaced persons, are addressed (…) (b) advoca- cy of humanitarian issues with political organs, notably the Security Council; and (c) coordination of humanitarian emergency response, by ensuring that an appropriate re- sponse mechanism is established, through [Inter Agency Standing Committee] consultations, on the ground.16

14 Toby Porter, ‘An External Review of the CAP: Commissioned by OCHA’s Evaluation and Studies Unit,’ (OCHA, 2002).

15 These figures include regular and extrabudgetary staff as well as UN volunteers.

16 United Nations Secretary General, ‘ Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform (A/51/950).’

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Additionally, GA resolution 46/182 includes a set of principles for humanitarian action, stating that the responsibility for people affected by emergency lies first and foremost with their respective states; states in need are expected to facilitate the work of responding organizations;

and that humanitarian assistance must be linked to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.¹⁷ However, while these core functions and principles serve as a basis for OCHA’s activities, they do not delineate a clear boundary as to the substantial content of its work – what should and should not be in- cluded among its operational tasks. OCHA states that its mission is to:

mobilize and coordinate effective and principled humanitari- an action in partnership with national and international ac- tors in order to alleviate human suffering in disasters and emergencies; advocate for the rights of people in need; pro- mote preparedness and prevention; and facilitate sustainable solutions.18

What exactly constitutes ‘humanitarian action’ is not clear. OCHA’s own dictionary defines humanitarian action as ‘aid that addresses the immediate needs of individuals affected by crises’.¹⁹ This raises the question of what is meant by ‘immediate needs’, and where are the limits to less immediate needs. Of course, there are good reasons for this vagueness in the OCHA mandate. Humanitarian work must necessarily be based on pragmatic considerations and reported needs on the ground, rather than rigorous definitions with no regard for the operational context. Tasks that might be seen as outside the mandate in one crisis might prove to be critical in another. However, it does compli- cate interactions with other actors, because divisions of labour are not clarified and controversies over areas of responsibility may arise, with the relationship between humanitarian relief and developmental projects being a recurret theme between OCHA and UN development agencies.

This characteristic of OCHA’s mandate is not unique, neither for UN agencies nor humanitarian NGOs. Nevertheless, it does seem that this feature influences OCHA’s actions more than the case with other UN organizations. While the mandate of the United Nations High Com- missioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is explicitly codified in the Refugee Convention of 1951²⁰ and the Office of Commissioner for Human

17 The principle of independence was added later.

18 See http://ochaonline.un.org/tabid/5838/language/en-US/Default.aspx and A/RES/46/182 (1991) and A/RES/45/100 (1990) and A/RES/2816 (1971)

19 Irin reliefweb glossary: www.reliefweb.int/glossary/pageloader.aspx?lista=H

20 Although the mandate has not been changed, UNHCR’s activities have been altered somewhat since the 1950s. Along with new regional focuses, the group receiving aid has expanded beyond the convention to include asylum seekers, refugees seeking to return

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Rights (OHCHR) can refer to the various treaties and declaration on Human Rights, OCHA has no equivalent reference document. Hence, ever since OCHA was founded, it has been imperative for the organization to assert its role and develop its own prerogatives among the UN agencies, and vis-à-vis the humanitarian NGOs and other actors.²¹

2.2 Funding

Originally it was intended that OCHA would receive its funding over the UN’s regular budget through the 5th committee. Today, the organization receives only approximately 5 per cent of its budget from the regular budget. This chronic underfunding of OCHA’s activities on the UN regular budget has made the organization highly dependent on voluntary contributions, the bulk of which come from Western donors through the OCHA Donor Support Group (ODSG). This is an infor- mal group of UN member states that provide OCHA with ‘financial, political and technical support’.²² Members commit to annual funding of a minimum threshold, currently $0.5 million.

The voluntary contributions from member states cover 94 per cent of the OCHA global budget. DPKO and DPA, by contrast, receive about 95 per cent of their funds from the regular budget, and only 5 per cent from voluntary contributions. Some 20 countries now contribute the bulk of OCHA’s funds. Since 2002, Sweden, the UK, the USA, the European Commission and Norway have been among OCHA’s main donors.

OCHA has a reoccurring problem of funding for its core activities and providing sufficient cash to maintain predictability. The amount of regular budget funding appropriated for use by OCHA decreased from 12 per cent of OCHA’s budget in the 2002–2003 biennium to 6 per cent for 2008–2009. This has consequences for staffing as well. Du- ring 2009, OCHA faced repeated cash challenges. The causes included late disbursements against pledges, heavy earmarking, depleted cash reserves following two years of underfunding, and the overall mismatch between donor income and OCHA expenditure.

2.3 Identity

In the words of one former senior staff member, OCHA is seen as the

‘NGO of the UN’. This organizational identity is closely linked to

home, IDPs and populations affected by armed conflict. See UNHCR, Protecting Refugees & the Role of UNHCR, (2009), 3.

22 The ODSG currently consists of Norway (chair), Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Nether- lands, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Commission.

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three aspects of the organizations. First, OCHA’s mandate, with its focus on the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, distinguishes the organization from other UN organizations in that OCHA defines itself, as do other humanitarian actors, as a-political. OCHA, like most humanitarian NGOs and agencies, receives contributions from private donors and corporations.

Compared to other humanitarian agencies, however, these contributions are rather negligible.²³ Nevertheless, this feature illustrates the difference between OCHA and the other key actors in the UN secretariat in the ambit of international peace and security, such as the DPKO and the DPA. Simultaneously, and adding to the split identity of OCHA, the organization is still subject to the cumbersome rules of the UN Secretariat and therefore does not enjoy the same type of independence as do the other UN specialized agencies.

Second, OCHA’s staff is to a large extent made up of people with backgrounds in humanitarian organizations and agencies like MSF, ICRC, UNICEF and UNHCR. Others have worked with humanitarian issues within the civil service of member states. In broad terms, DPKO staffers generally have a background in the foreign service, military or police of member states, whereas employees in the DPA come from academic or diplomatic careers.²⁴

Third, OCHA’s identity is also dependent on the personality and background of the ERC. Over the years, these have been both activists and diplomats. Sérgio Vieira de Mello (1998–2001) had a long background from both field and headquarters work within UNHCR, inter- spersed with experience from UN missions. Kenzo Oshima (2001–

2003) was a career diplomat from Japan, where he, among other positions, had worked with Japan’s peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance programme. Jan Egeland (2003–2006) had been State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the 1990s, but was Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross when appointed and had a strong NGO background from a decade of working for Am- nesty International, the Red Cross and solidarity movements. Sir John Holmes (2007–2010) was a British diplomat who had worked with a range of issues during his career in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Like his assistant, Katharine Bragg, Holmes had little or no field experience. The current ERC, Valerie Amos, made a career in the British Labour Party, as Chief Executive of the Equal Opportuni- ties Commission and as Secretary of State for International Develop- ment.

23 In 2009, OCHA received approx USD 0.03 mill from private donors. In comparison, UNHCR secured a total amount of USD 21 mill to the organization from private donors the same year.

24 Interview, former senior OCHA Official.

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3. The emergence of Protection of Civilians as Theme

Over the last decade, the issue of protection of civilians in armed conflict (PoC) has become a regular feature of Security Council delibera- tions. Protection of civilians as a separate thematic issue in the UN context was first articulated in 1998 in two reports of the Secretary- General, one on Africa²⁵ and the other on protection for humanitarian assistance to refugees and others.²⁶

Several events during the 1990s had contributed to highlight the plight of civilians in armed conflict: the war in Somalia, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the war in the Balkans. In the late 1990s, the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Timor-Leste and Kosovo further spurred international interest in protection issues. These events were illustrative of a longer-running trend in conflicts globally. In the last century, the ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties as a result of conflict had risen steadily, until civilian deaths outnumbered those of combatants.²⁷ Several factors contributed to this trend: First, a shift from small and decentralized wars into war as state-driven enterprises involving whole populations. Second, a shift from interstate to intrastate war. Third, an increase in unconventional conflict involving one or more irregular armed groups. This resulted in a blurring of the distinc- tion between combatants taking part in hostilities, on the one hand, and civilians on the other, raising the death toll of civilians relative to combatants. Such casualties are not only the unintended consequences of conflict – as in the on-going debates about ‘collateral damage’ – but also the result of civilians being deliberately targeted by armed groups. Lastly, the prevalence of affordable, high-quality and portable small arms and light weapons, making killing quicker, easier and more efficient.

3.1 Human Security and Protection of Civilians

As Security Council Resolutions often note, the legal framework for the PoC in armed conflict is provided by international humanitarian

25 ‘The causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa', (United Nations 1998).

26 'Protection for Humanitarian Assistance to Refugees and Others in Conflict Situations', (United Nations, 2008).

27 Milton Leitenberg, ed., 'Deaths in Wars and Conflicts in the 20th Century', Occasional Paper (Cornell University Peace Studies Program, 2003).These estimates are in the mid- dle range.

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law (IHL), human rights law and refugee law,²⁸ and more recently also international criminal law. Equally important for the emergence of PoC on the Security Council agenda was the concept of ‘human security’ and how it made its way into international politics in the mid- 1990s. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is seen as a milestone publication for the idea of human security. It argued that ensuring ‘freedom from want’ and

‘freedom from fear’ for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.²⁹ Thus, PoC can be said to have taken on a dual character – long-established in international law on the one hand (since 1949), and later introduced in conjunction with political debates about international peace and security, with specific reference to human security. Canada was here a key actor.

Canada was one of the first countries to incorporate ‘Human Security’

in its own foreign policy. This move has been linked to Lloyd Axwor- thy, who was appointed foreign minister in 1996. When Canada an- nounced its campaign for a seat on the Security Council in 1999–

2000, Human Security became one element, if not the central one, in Canada’s efforts to differentiate its foreign policy from others. Canada already had a good track record in this respect, not least through its work on the convention on antipersonnel landmines (1997), the issue of child soldiers, the international trade in small arms, and the statutes to create an International Criminal Court (signed in July 1998). Secu- rity Council membership was seen as an effective way to promote Canada’s human security objectives, while also bolstering the country’s international prestige.³⁰ The concept of PoC served as an efficient vehicle for this strategy.

The humanitarian crises of the 1990s had made humanitarian action closely associated with meeting the material needs of the civilian pop- ulation. Systematically lacking, however, was the provision of safety for civilians in war zones. The paradox was that the recipients of humanitarian aid often ended up as the so-called ‘well-fed dead’. With the failures of the international community, and the Security Council, to halt the atrocities in Rwanda and the Balkans as a background, Canada argued that a shift towards the protection of individuals in conflict zones – human security – would have to be central to the Council’s work.³¹

28 SC Resolution 1894, operative paragraphs 1, 5, 7 (a).

29 For a comprehensive analysis of all definitions, critiques and counter-critiques, see Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh and Anuradha Chenoy, Human Security: Concepts and Implications (New York: Routledge, 2007).

30 David M. Malone, 'Eyes on the Prize: The Quest for Nonpermanent Seats on the UN Security Council', Global Governance 6, no. 1 (2000).

31 Elissa Golberg and Don Hubert, 'The Security Council and the Protection of Civilians'’ in Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace, ed.

Robert Grant McRae and Don Hubert (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 224.²²⁴

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However, human security was not necessarily a winning ticket among all actors in the General Assembly, given many UN member states’

fears of a weakening of the principle of state sovereignty. Canada managed to win over enough states in part by calling for reform of the Council’s working methods – an issue of concern to most non- members.³² Running an effective campaign, Canada won the seat of the Western European and Other States Group with 131 votes.

3.2 Placing PoC on the Security Council Agenda

The UN Security Council is a conservative forum, where the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity have historically out- weighed those of human rights. However, the cumulative impact of Council decisions during the 1990s eroded and re-defined the concept of state sovereignty.³³ There was also a growing acceptance among Council members for the Council president, during a given month, to promote a specific substantive theme for broad-ranging discussion, as distinct from the Council’s usual crisis-response mode of interaction.

Canada was assisted by other non-permanent members of the Security Council in placing PoC on the Council agenda. On 21 January 1999, Brazil, as president of the Security Council, invited the ERC and director of OCHA, Sérgio Vieira de Mello (a Brazilian national), to give an open briefing on humanitarian activities relevant to the Security Council.

Canada held the presidency in the following month, and prepared a two-pronged approach to promote the protection of civilians as part of its focus on human security. First, on 12 February 1999, it chaired an open debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. The Ca- nadian delegation worked closely with the UN ERC, de Mello and the ICRC, and gathered support for the debate through diplomatic dé- marches of Council members to their respective capitals. The presidential statement that was adopted consolidated the Council’s com- mitment on a range of protection issues and, importantly, established a follow-up process, by calling on the Secretary-General to submit a report on the topic by September during the Dutch presidency.

32 Malone, 'Eyes on the Prize: The Quest for Nonpermanent Seats on the UN Security Council'. For an alternative view of Canada’s motivations for pursuing a foreign policy on Human Security, see Nikola Hynek and David Bosold, 'A History and Genealogy of the Freedom from Fear Doctrine', International Journal 64, no. 3 (2009). They argue that the Canada’s policies were shaped by a political economy of power that existed in Canadian society, rather than as a response to shifts in global security dynamics.

33 David M. Malone, 'The Security Council in the Post-Cold War Era: A Study in the Creative Interpretation of the UN Charter', New York University Journal of International Law and Politics (JILP), 35, no. 2, 487–517, Winter 2003.

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OCHA was tasked with writing the Secretary-General's report on Pro- tection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.³⁴ Sérgio Vieira de Mello and OCHA were instrumental in establishing the current regime where OCHA is responsible for drafting the Secretary-General’s report every 18 months and the ERC provides an oral brief to the Security Council every six months.

The Secretary-General’s report, presented in September 1999, had been drafted by OCHA. It aimed at improving the legal and physical protection of civilians before and during situations of armed conflict.

The report put forward forty recommendations and provided a gradat- ed menu of options ranging from diplomatic and political initiatives to peacekeeping and enforcement operations. While placing the onus of responsibility on the warring parties, the report also highlighted the clear responsibilities of the international community.³⁵ On 17 Septem- ber, Security Council resolution 1265 was adopted, following the debate of the report. In December 1999, Canada began chairing an in- formal working group tasked with reviewing the report’s recommendations and reporting on to the Council on proposals for further action during Canada’s next presidency in April 2000. Preparing the follow- up resolution proved extremely contentious. Matters pertaining to legal protection were transferred to the General Assembly, and a detailed resolution on physical protection was drafted.³⁶ On 19 April 2000, the council agreed to resolution 1296 calling for peacekeeping mandates, ‘when appropriate’, to be provided with adequate human and financial resources to protect civilians under ‘imminent physical threat’. The resolution also called on the newly-created Council working group to consider the Secretary-General’s recommendations on mitigating the humanitarian impact of sanctions.

These resolutions re-affirmed the Council’s presidential statement that outlined a set of issues that were to become the core of PoC (UNSC 1999): (i) the need to ensure safety of civilians, (ii) ensure compliance with IHL, (iii) address impunity and injustice, (iv) unimpeded access and safety of humanitarian personnel, and (v) address the proliferation of small arms and the problems by conventional armaments.

34 'OCHA in 2000: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Annual Plan and Budget', (United Nations, 2000).

35 Golberg and Hubert, 'The Security Council and the Protection of Civilians', 226.

36 Ibid.

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4. OCHA seizing the opportunity

OCHA is neither an operational organization nor a mandated protection agency.³⁷ Still, it became instrumental in placing and maintaining Protection of Civilians as a theme on the agenda of the UN Security Council. This was, and still is, done to the extent that OCHA is now seen as owning the policy franchise of PoC and serving as its conceptual anchor within the UN.³⁸

An important factor in this development was de Mello’s identification of the potential that lay in the concept of PoC to advance humanitarian issues in the Security Council. As recounted by his biographer, de Mello came to the position as head of OCHA from a long career at UNHCR. At the time of being appointed USG for OCHA, he had grown frustrated with those in the humanitarian community that main- tained a ‘purist’ stance and wanted to use his position as head of OCHA to be engaged in strategic, political decision-making.³⁹ He seized the opportunity presented to him by the Canadian initiative and other members of the Security Council to regularly brief the Council on PoC, which by virtue of its broad scope could include a host of issues hitherto not on the Council’s agenda.⁴⁰ As an organization, OCHA occupies a precarious position – being part of the UN secretariat yet at the same time part of, and ultimately dependent upon, humanitarian organizations both inside and outside the UN. PoC repre- sented an opportunity to assert its position as central in, indeed owning, what seemed to be a potentially powerful policy concept.

It is noteworthy in this context that a 2006 OCHA policy instruction on protection notes that ‘As a coordination entity, OCHA does not provide direct protection services as do protection-mandates agencies such as UNHCR, OHCHR, UNICEF, or ICRC.’ This is followed by a reference to the importance of protection for humanitarian action:

‘However, it is widely agreed that attention to protection is essential for effective humanitarian action and, as such, all humanitarian actors – including OCHA – have a role to play.’⁴¹ The implication here is that even though OCHA does not do direct protection work, it has a central role to play because protection is important.

37 The protection-mandated UN agencies are OHCHR, UNHCR, UNICEF

38 Jon Harald Sande Lie and Benjamin de Carvalho, 'Protecting Civilians and Protecting Ideas: Institutional Challenges to the Protection of Civilians', in NUPI Working Paper 760 (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2009), 9.

39 Samantha Power, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 221.

41 ‘OCHA’s Role in Supporting Protection: International and Field Level Responsibilities’, Policy Instruction. New York. OCHA (2006) p. 2.

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This is not to question the convictions of OCHA staff and leadership and their genuine aspirations for the implementation of the Protection of Civilians. As we also document below, other actors, among them OHCHR and UNHCR, have exhibited the same tendencies, and our focus here on OCHA is meant to illustrate this more general dynamics. The specific point as regards OCHA is how its particular institutional position – with an unstable funding situation, vague mandate and a challenging task of coordinating other humanitarian actors (who often do not want to be coordinated) – has shaped its decisions on PoC. Against this backdrop, we contend that the OCHA leadership placed a premium on securing political influence, and saw PoC as an effective means to that end.

4.1 Addressing the Security Council

One of OCHA’s core functions is to advocate for humanitarian issues with political organs, notably the Security Council. Having access to the Council means being heard by the five permanent members and getting issues to the top of the international agenda. The Security Council is also an important stage from which OCHA and the ERC can launch their messages and appeals to actors outside the UN. By showing that it is heard by the Council, OCHA can bolster its legitimacy as a representative of the humanitarian community and advocate for the effectiveness of humanitarian work. However, gaining regular access to the Council has proved a challenge for representatives of the humanitarian community, and here the ERC has been no exception.

During the early 1990s, the Security Council was all but closed to in- put from others than its current members. Over the years, Council members increasingly came to recognize that inputs would have be broader than those of the 15 members in order to secure quality in decision-making. The Council therefore opened up the consultation process to a range of other actors, including troop-contributing countries, the wider UN membership, ECOSOC, the secretariat and nongovernmental organizations.⁴² Throughout the 1990s, the number of open meetings rose, as the result of a considerable increase in the workload and members’ efforts to promote openness and transparency in the work of the Council. In late 1998, the Council decided, in the interest of enhancing the transparency of its working methods, that briefings by the Secretariat or other persons could be held during public meetings.⁴³

42 Susan C. Hulton, 'Council Working Methods and Procedures', in The UN Security Council: from the Cold War to the 21st century, ed. David M. Malone (Boulder, CO:

Lynne Rienner, 2004), 241.

43 Presidential Note S/1998/1016 of 30 October 1998

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Since the establishment of OCHA in 1992, the Security Council received regular briefings from the ERC on the humanitarian aspects of situations on the Council’s agenda. However, these briefings were ad hoc and related to specific situations rather than broad themes. In con- trast, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had, since 1992, briefed the Council on a regular basis on developments concerning refugees and displaced persons.⁴⁴ As noted, the prospect of the opportunity for regularly briefing the Council was much valued – perhaps especially for OCHA, given its lack of own substantive mandate – and was an important motivation for Sérgio Vieira de Mello’s decision to accept the position of ERC in 1998.⁴⁵

4.2 Strengthening legitimacy, increasing funding

The opportunity to directly address the Security Council was also seen as a priority among two of OCHA’s key constituencies: OCHAs Do- nor Support Group and the humanitarian community.⁴⁶ OCHA relied on the former for its financial stability, and the latter for its legitimacy, both as spokesperson on humanitarian issues within the UN and else- where and as a humanitarian coordinator.

The humanitarian community

As the designated coordinator of humanitarian emergency response, OCHA’s main constituency is the community of humanitarian organizations. These include the relevant UN agencies, such as UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP and UNDP, as well as the humanitarian NGOs⁴⁷ under the umbrellas of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies⁴⁸ and Interaction.⁴⁹ OCHA interacts with these organizations largely through the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) at the global level and through the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) at country level. OCHA’s relationship with the humanitarian community affects the organization’s standing and legitimacy in two distinct ways. For advocacy vis-à-vis the Security Council and UN member states, it is important for OCHA to be seen as a legitimate spokesperson for the humanitarian community. Simultaneously, OCHA’s success in coordinating the humanitarian community is heavily contingent on its abil- ity to show that it safeguards the interests of these organizations, par-

44 Hulton, 'Council Working Methods and Procedures', 244.

45 S. Power, Chasing the Flame, 221.

47 The ICRC is an exception, as it is the only institution explicitly named under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a controlling authority. The legal mandate of the ICRC stems from the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, as well as its own Statutes.

48 The International Council of Voluntary Agencies is a global network of nongovernmental organisations that advocates effective humanitarian action.

49 InterAction is the largest alliance of US-based international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focused on the world’s poor and vulnerable.

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ticularly in relation to the UN Secretariat and of course the Council member states. This is a complicated balancing act.

Although OCHA has greatly increased its field presence in recent years, it is still relatively weak compared to the other large humanitarian agencies and NGOs.⁵⁰ It relies on the humanitarian organizations both in order to implement humanitarian action and in order to collect and return information about the situation on the ground back to headquarters and further to the Security Council and the international community, including the media.

The humanitarian NGOs feel a sense of ownership of OCHA. One official at a humanitarian NGO noted, for example, that they very much see OCHA as ‘their’ organization, and that they voice criticisms of its operation bilaterally because they want to help and improve its work.⁵¹ While the IASC is intended to serve as an inclusive and representative mechanism for humanitarian coordination, many NGOs still regard it as a ‘blue team’ – dominated by the UN agencies.⁵² Moreo- ver, many in the humanitarian community remain sceptical of the expertise and authority of OCHA’s non-operational coordination staff and the additional layers of bureaucracy entailed.⁵³ OCHA’s handling of recent crises, such as the 2007 floods in Pakistan and the earth- quake in Haiti in 2009, are cited as examples where OCHA has not always contributed to improve that view. In Haiti, for example, interviewees were concerned that OCHA contributed inexperienced personnel without the proper experience and contextual knowledge to coordinate agencies and NGOs with long experience in the field.⁵⁴ Moreover, there is an inherent difficulty in being charged with coordination, as the actors that are to be coordinated will necessarily have to conform to guidelines and decisions by the coordinator.⁵⁵ Other humanitarian NGOs, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), have not necessarily seen coordination as a blessing. They fear that UN and do- nor policies of coherence, mission integration and the politicization of aid in contexts such as Angola, the DRC, Sierra Leone and Afghani- stan, undermine humanitarian ideals and effectiveness.⁵⁶ This – the humanitarian dilemma – reflects a tension between the partiality involved in UN support for a political transition process and the impar-

50 Many interviewees, both from OCHA itself and from other UN agencies, commented upon its comparatively weak field presence. OCHA’s field staff by 2010 numbered 1539, whereas, UNCHRC has more than 6000. In Sudan, ICRC has 143 expatriates and 1,488 national staff (daily workers not included). OCHA has 224 expats and 42 national staff.

51 Interview, senior NRC official, (Oslo: December 2010).

52 Interview, humanitarian organization, (New York: December 2010).

53 Longford, 'OCHA One Year On: Is Humanitarian Coordination any Better'.

54 Interview, senior NRC official.

55 Interview, OCHA official , (December 2010).

56 Penny Harrison, 'The Strategic Framework and Principled Common Programming: A Challenge to Humanitarian Assistance', Humanitarian Exchange Magazine 19 (2001).

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tiality needed to protect humanitarian space.⁵⁷ Such concerns were reinforced by the humanitarian reforms introduced in 2006. The crea- tion of thematic clusters led by a UN agency in the field and the re- launch of the CERF were criticized for increasing the layers of coordination and funding, while lacking accountability and consistent evaluation of the impact. Likewise, it was questioned whether NGOs should be accountable at all to the UN system and the Humanitarian Coordinator in the field.⁵⁸ Nevertheless, there is an understanding among the NGOs that the humanitarian effort needs stronger coordination, and that OCHA is – and will continue to be – the vehicle for achieving this,⁵⁹ particularly because OCHA is in a position to identify gaps and improve humanitarian response in a way that NGOs cannot do individually.⁶⁰

The UN humanitarian agencies have been somewhat sceptical of OCHA’s role as coordinator, policy developer and advocate for the humanitarian community. When OCHA was established, the leadership within UNHCR in particular feared that OCHA would take over many of its tasks.⁶¹ The executive heads of UNHCR, WFP, UNICEF and the UNDP each preside over resources, human and financial, that dwarf those of OCHA. If coordination means losing autonomy, they are less than willing to accept OCHA’s coordination authority.⁶² Moreover, many of these organizations do not need OCHA in order to gain access to key policymakers within the UN secretariat or member states. They have their channels, even to the UN Security Council. In the development of humanitarian policy at headquarters level in New York, however, the picture seems to be more nuanced. There, UN agencies, Secretariat departments and the ICRC cooperate and coordinate actively. Respondents within these organizations also see OCHA at headquarters level as more pragmatic and ready to go further in policy development than many of the IASC members.⁶³

It seems that both OCHA and the humanitarian community are aware that OCHA is more dependent on the cooperation of the humanitarian NGOs and UN agencies than vice versa. So far, cooperation on the CAP has not led to any major increase in contributions from donors, thereby undermining the incentive for the humanitarian community to cooperate with OCHA. Thus, OCHA’s success as a coordinating

57 Espen Barth Eide et al., Report on Integrated Missions: Practical Perspectives and Recommendations', (May 2005). Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

58 Katharine Derderian et al., 'UN humanitarian reforms: a view from the field', Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, no. 39 (June 2007).

59 ‘Interview, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Official,’ (Oslo: December 2010).

60 Interview, humanitarian organization.

61 Weiss, ‘Civilian-military interactions and ongoing UN reforms: DHA's past and OCHA's remaining challenges.’and Interview, former senior OCHA Official.

62 Weiss, ‘Civilian-military interactions and ongoing UN reforms: DHA's past and OCHA's remaining challenges.’

63 Interview, humanitarian organization.

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agency, in sharing information and in providing services, hinges cru- cially on the goodwill of the humanitarian community. However, increasingly, donors are looking to OCHA as a guarantor to improve accountability; they prefer to channel contributions through OCHA’s various mechanisms such as the CAP and the clusters. Nevertheless, many organizations that have other sources of funding, notably private donors, are hesitant to follow OCHA’s provisions if they see them as counter to the interests of their organizations.⁶⁴ A continuing challenge for OCHA is therefore to prove that it serves the interests of the humanitarian community, not only when it comes to country-level coordination, but also in policy development and advocacy in headquarters and capitals.⁶⁵

The OCHA Donor Support Group

The ODSG was not involved in OCHA’s decision to take an active part in promoting the PoC agenda, but the group of donors did endorse it post factum.⁶⁶ Individually, however, some of OCHA’s largest donors, like Norway (on the Security Council from 2001 to 2002) Cana- da (1999–2000) and the UK (permanent member), were important drivers for the PoC agenda. This increased the incentives for a finan- cially constrained OCHA to further follow up the PoC agenda.

Although the ODSG does not have formal authority over OCHA’s dispositions, it does wield considerable indirect power by being able to earmark contributions to certain activities. That is: the individual states that comprise the ODSG – not the ODSG as a group – typically earmark funds for activities they see as important. Currently, 60 per cent of voluntary contributions from the ODSG are earmarked – down from 70 per cent in 2003. This affects OCHA’s operations and autonomy in several ways. Creating new staff positions within the bureaucracy is a cumbersome process that has pass the UN’s 5^th committee.

Since the committee accepts few alterations, and only rarely allow in- creases in staff, most new OCHA positions are funded by voluntary contributions from the ODSG. This helps explain why, for example, 371 out of 441 positions at OCHA headquarters were extra-budgetary.

These dynamics are also seen in allocations of resources between headquarters and the field. Since the beginning, the core activities of headquarters have remained consistently under-funded, compelling OCHA to borrow from other non-earmarked accounts to support these activities. In the field, some offices are over-funded – but with earmarked funds that cannot be used to meet funding gaps in other offic-

64 Interview, senior NRC Official.

65 Interview, OCHA Official‘.